In which we give Tyson Yunkaporta a book that's too good
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What themes are explored in Michael Christie's Greenwood?
This is an ABC podcast.
Islands in fiction, trees, Napoleon and the end of the Raj in literature seen through a haze of opium smoke. Hi, welcome to the Bookshelf on Radio National. I'm Kate Evans.
It is a bit cloudy in here, Kate. But I'm Cassie McCullough, here with some new books, climate fiction and some historical beekeeping, Kate.
And British crime novelist Abir Mukherjee will be along later. His novels are set in India in the 1920s and he'll talk about the bookshelf that shaped him. Do I still have to call it me, my shelf and I this year, Cassie?
Look, you can take people to brilliant puns, but if they won't drink, what can you do? Sorry. I don't know. I'm still calling it that. You can call it what you want.
How does Tyson Yunkaporta define Sand Talk?
Also today, a Canadian novel that begins in a tree museum because by 2038, that's the only place you can see them. Hello, Joni Mitchell.
Oh, do I have to play Joni Mitchell?
All the trees, put them in a tree museum And they charge the people a dollar and a half just to
But first, let's welcome to the bookshelf today Tyson Yunkaporta. He's a senior lecturer in Indigenous knowledges at Deakin University and his latest book is Sand Talk, How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Well, how timely. Tyson, hello. Hey, how you doing?
So, Tyson, what does Sand Talk mean?
The term Sand Talk is just a modality of conveying information. It can also be ritualistic, artistic, etc. But a lot of it's just everyday stuff you do. You just draw on the dirt to show people places, things, abstract ideas even. Basically a way of teaching and conveying knowledge.
What insights does Tyson share about Indigenous thinking?
So it comes from a sort of the visual image of bending down, drawing a picture in the sand.
Yeah, even sitting in a circle and, you know, the old ladies there will be drawing, you know, showing different things in different places, different stories, you know, big ideas. You know, like 10,000 words would take too long to say, so you show an image.
Yeah.
And it comes through a lot more viscerally and it's super irrational and conveys a lot of knowledge in a very short space of time.
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, how just some gestural stuff can really take you along. So that's such a long way conceptually. Now, just a few weeks ago, Tyson, Ilka Tamke was on the show and she recommended this book of yours to us. And she described it as a Indigenous cosmology. Now, what do you reckon? Is that a good summation? Does that work for you, that title?
Well, Ilka's pretty amazing. So she does the feminist fantasy stuff. Yes. Celtic kind of.
What is the significance of trees in Greenwood?
The song was her most recent one.
That's it? Yeah. And then there was a sequel. She described it as a cosmology.
Yes.
Right. I mean, every book is a peek into somebody's cosmology. You know, it's like a fish swimming in water, doesn't know what water is. It's the same way you look at someone else's cosmology and you go, oh, wow, they got a cosmology. But, you know, everybody got a cosmology. It's just, you know, what the cosmos looks like from your point of view.
So what did you want to do with this book, Tyson? Because one of the things I thought was really interesting was the way that you say to us in the early parts of this book that this isn't about you wanting to tell your life story. You don't want to do one of those narratives about exactly what's happened to you and use that as a way to explain Indigenous thinking. You're wanting to do something else. So why was it important to put that out there, that it's not just about telling personal stories?
Well, because that's what everybody demands, because that's what they're used to reading. There's a professor, Martin Nakata, he's a Torres Strait Islander, really big intellectual. And he mentored me for a few years. And I was doing a lot of personal narrative, like we all do. And he said, you've got to stop doing that. He said, that's what we all do.
How does the concept of the Great Withering impact the story?
You need to go beyond that narrative. You need to get to the meta-narrative.
Mm-hmm.
But it's also, I don't know, I started to get, I don't know, annoyed about it because when I stopped doing that, people were disappointed.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What themes are explored in Michael Christie's Greenwood?
0:02–0:55
2
How does Tyson Yunkaporta define Sand Talk?
0:55–2:02
3
What insights does Tyson share about Indigenous thinking?
2:02–3:05
4
What is the significance of trees in Greenwood?
3:05–4:20
5
How does the concept of the Great Withering impact the story?
4:20–5:01
6
What role does the character Jake play in the narrative?
5:01–5:53
7
How does the author connect personal histories with environmental themes?
5:53–10:00
8
What reflections does Abir Mukherjee offer about his writing process?
10:00–54:03
Speakers
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